Seeking Information

Oliver Benjamin Lowell is the leader of a Christian Separatist group with ties in both the United States and Northern Europe, and which goes by the name PURE. He is sought in connection to the hijacking of 4 passenger jets on 7/27/06 in South Asia.

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SIRAJ SAYS: Given my US citizenship and deployment overseas with Al Jazeera, the editors have asked that I enable privacy features after this blog turned up on Google. Fortunately, and despite recent events, I have not been prohibited from contacting friends or family. However, as of December 16, 2006 I have been asked to 'restrict access to authorized users only'. Therefore on December 20 I'm blunting the RSS Feed until further notice. Check your inbox for a login name and password. If you are reading this and your name is not one of the following, please log off this site NOW: Siraj Talal, Annika Risacher, Jasper L. Friedman, Terry O'Gara.

Global Connections

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Intense and thorough, Jasper! Kudos.

That said...

If the war really is about oil, the future doesn't have to be.

Obviously, oil will run out one day. Some people say that it will sooner than later. I think if the petroleum companies were smart they'd start repositioning themselves right now as energy companies, or fuel-technology companies, instead of investing in more drilling more black sludge. But maybe they are already doing that? All I know is what I see on the news, although, yeah, I read a lot of news, sure. We're all news junkies a bit, aren't we.

Anyway, it seems to me that right now –in light of current events– it's also the time for both Industry AND Government to actually do something to make all our green dreams of a sustainable global civilization a reality.

What we need to see is Big Oil become Big Energy and start spearheading research and investment into renewable hydrogen and renewable diesel, perhaps from waste biomass; and they also need to lead the charge in the development of a standard for pure bio diesel for use as a fuel.

As for the Government, I know Bush and Cheney are ex-oil execs, so they probably can’t see beyond petroleum, but I can.

We need more men and women in government with vision for a cleaner, more efficient and more compassionate future.

How about instead of spending the next two decades doubling our Strategic Petroleum Reserves, why not halve that goal so that we also have the resources to spend the next twenty years building a hydrogen fueling infrastructure? Then Washington might also begin executing policy solutions that accelerate early deployment and market development for hydrogen and fuel cell, bodies, and biomass-to-energy technologies. Does that make sense to anybody with legislative power, or just us plebes?

Someone also needs to start examining options for policy directives to convert agricultural waste into energy in a cost-effective manner?

Not to mention we need to start getting lawyers involved in order to get the way clear for new technology, and before the naysayers think up so many rules and regulations that it'll be illegal or outrageously costly to buy into hydro. We need legal experts to to begin anticipating, exploring and addressing the issues that I know will surely come into play once alternative fuel options scale up into commonplace reality, whether that's 25 years from now or a hundred –we need to start now.

For instance, does anyone know if there are any safety issues associated with replacing the local gas station with a hydrogen plant? Cause I don't know the answer to that. Just how is handling hydrogen different from liquid hydrocarbons? Let's get community planners and administrators to start thinking about these things now so that we're prepared for such a transition when the technology has reached such critical mass that they can roll it out at affordable prices.

What about windmills? Big blades whirring in the sky? Seems okay to me, but is it really?

While we're at it we need to address and contain urban sprawl. If energy production is half the problem, sprawl is the other half. Sprawl supports continued reliance on the automobile –instead of walking and or using mass transit– and therefore it shares much blame for our dependence on foreign oil. Our civic planners need to start dealing with sprawl as though they have a fire under their collective asses.

Just because we have cars in the future doesn't mean we should drive them everywhere for every little thing.

When I think about it, if you take a good look at New York, it seems to me that Manhattan might turn out to be the greenest city on the planet today, –not because of any current environmental policy or recycling program, but because of the sheer fact the borough is limited to a single island with the only place to build being up or down, and a it's all threaded together by an exceptional mass transit system. Metropolitan hive living, it seems to me, might be the most ecological conscientious lifestyle for a planet that supports millions and millions of ceaseless replicating destructive human beings.

Now I’d hate to force everyone into a city dwelling, but I also hate the fact that humans feel no compunction whatsoever about leveling the entire Amazon forest so that they can wipe their butts with toilet paper. Isn't that a sad end to a mighty oak? I think so.